Minimum-fuel rocket trajectories involving intermediate-thrust arcs

Abstract

The optimal trajectories in the neighborhood of an optimal intermediate-thrust arc are investigated for the minimumfuel orbit rendezvous problem with fixed specific impulse. Since such an arc is singular, the thrust acceleration magnitude being the singular control component, a second-variation analysis leads to the identification of a field of neighboring, singular arcs in a state space of dimension four rather than six, provided that a suitable Jacobi condition is met. A given neighboring initial six-dimensional state vector does not generally lie on a neighboring singular arc, and junction onto the appropriate singular arc must be accomplished by a short period of strong variations in the acceleration. This contributes an addition to the fuel expenditure which is of order 5/2 rather than 2 in the initial state displacement. The minimization of this higher-order cost, in the case of bounded acceleration, leads to an unsymmetrical version of Fuller's problem, whose solution requires an infinite number of switches between maximum and zero thrust during the short period. For unbounded thrust, the junction simplifies to either coast-impulse-singular trajectories or impulse-coast-impulse-singular trajectories. The neighboring singular arc meets the final condition in 4 dimensions, rather than 6 dimensions, and rendezvous must be completed by another, terminal short period of strong variations in the acceleration. Implications for midcourse guidance near a singular arc are discussed.